Re: git-am applies commit message diffs

From: Kristoffer Haugsbakk <kristofferhaugsbakk@fastmail.com>
Date: Feb 6, 2026, 08:43 UTC
Message-ID: <1b1f8959-aa11-4bce-8535-7245c8567d6a@app.fastmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <bcqvh7ahjjgzpgxwnr4kh3hfkksfruf54refyry3ha7qk7dldf@fij5calmscvm>

On Fri, Feb 6, 2026, at 08:43, Matthias Beyer wrote:

Show 22 quoted lines

> Hi,
>
> I am not sure whether this was already reported, searching the lore did
> not yield anything for me, but I might have overlooked it...
>
> This was just posted on mastodon[0]:
>
>     PSA: Did you know that it’s **unsafe** to put code diffs into your
> commit messages?
>
>     Like https://
>     github.com/i3/i3/pull/6564 for example
>
>     Such diffs will be applied by patch(1) (also git-am(1)) as part of
> the code change!
>
>     This is how a sleep(1) made it into i3 4.25-2 in Debian unstable.
>
> TL;DR: If you put a diff in the commit message, that diff will be
> applied by git-am.
>
> This looks clearly like unintended and might be an attack-vector, right?

Related: https://lore.kernel.org/git/ca13705ae4817ffba16f97530637411b59c9eb19.camel@scientia.org/

But for the magic string that git-format-patch(1) uses at the start of each email.

Like Jacob said the cure is to use indentation for code blocks.

https://lore.kernel.org/git/xmqqttcmv8a6.fsf@gitster.g/#t

Indentation for code blocks: just stylistic until it isn’t. ;-)